Powerbasic

[pdwyer]

Hi,

Lot of familiar names here from the Powerbasic forums

I actually got banned from the PowerB forum for giving them a hard time about their vapourware policy (where they don't supply their customers with any roadmap info about their products). My belief (no evidence though) is that this policy got formed because they announced a linux version in 1998 that never eventuated. I wanted to know if it was coming or not and in the end got as far as "yes we are building it, no we will not release [another] release date"

I like the powerpasic product but I didn't like their corporate attitude to their customers, I also got a little tired of the cafe and all the intolerent Christian fundamentalist flame wars (although to be fair their was plenty of intolerence all around and not just with a single group)

To the compilers themselves, I think the mentality behind the builds is very different, powerbasic's intention is to be more along the lines of a basic version of a fundamental C compiler and that's their core where as purebasic is more about features through modules. Powerbasic won't be offering DX, ODBC, Linked lists any time soon as it's not what they do and if you talk to the people on their forum they don't want powerB to go in that direction either so it's just a case of choose a tool you feel suits you better.

One thing I don't like about PowerB is that the commandline compiler and the windows compiler are two products to be purchased separately, I don't see any reason for this other than a historical legacy from when they were a dos compiler then kept for greed purposes.

From the perspective of someone coming from PowerB to PureB V4 is a big deal as the 64k string limitation is gone, this might not be a big thing for a PureB person but for a PowerB person this was close to a showstopper in changing compilers, I've owned PureB for a few years but only used it a little for cmdline apps partly because of this. Now this limitation is gone I'm a happy chappy and here to stay (I can also post in this forum unlike PowerB)

If I have a concern about PureB then it's threading, parts of it don't look thread safe especially if you were using the database and thread modules together (or TCP module). I haven't hit a problem yet but I've hardly used it, it's just an area I suspect will be problematic as different threads would work with different connections via the same connection ID's and looks like it could get ugly (might be a false alarm though and I'm panicing about nothing)

Anyway, I'm working on a new programming hobby now which is a Kendo game so PowerB is not the right tool for this job anyway as I want to work with sprites and DX so it's a no brainer. Since I'm banned from their forums its probably about time I got more used to PureB and moved away from PowerB for support issues.

It's a pitty, There's some good people over there, Paul Squires, Eric Pearson, Knuth and others. Maybe I'll see them over here soon now that the 64k string thing is a non issues

Nice to see some familiar names though, Hi Elias and Edwin! Long time no see

I'll try to behave so I don't get banned from here too

Paul Dwyer

[Brice Manuel]

...

[pdwyer]

Still, I think I hold the title of the most hated PureB user

Not for long!

[Elias Montoya]

Hey Paul... there you are... i was wondering few months ago where you were (i even asked in the forums). So you got banned huh?

Well, since we are on the subject, i think i have also a point here, i have
heard many versions that bob is strict, that the forums are managed in an
arbitrary way and stuff like that. Even some good friends think there is
some extra religious way of handling the forums (like the non vapourware
policy).

That has not been my case in any way. I think Bob has been extra nice
to me. I even started with a non-genuine copy of PowerBasic and they
didnt kicked my butt. I liked it so much (and i still do), that i bought not
only PB 7.00 but also PBCC and some caritative soul (like there are many
many in PB forums) gave me as a gift the 8.00 version of PB.

The PB forums has been a blessing for me, so many good friends there,
Like my friend Brad byrne who has helped me even more than many
friends that leave near my house. Or my Friend Douglas horner who sent
me not only 1... but 2 PC's when mine got broken. And MANY other people
that has supported me with donations...

Too bad you got banned Paul, you were missed. But Now im here, and
no, Im not leaving for any reason the PowerBASIC forums nor
PowerBASIC compiler, those are now part of my life.

So, lets get to work, im learning PureBasic already.

Im thinking i can Expand the forms designer to support PureBasic code
generation... and we are already working on the PureBasic Examples for
Egrid32.

[pdwyer]

I saw when the people over there pitched in a bought you stuff, I was very impressed. There are some genuinely good hearted people over there.

It's not always rosie though, Wayne Diamond got chopped in a similar way in my opinion over that PBForms arguement, after all he put in, host code sites, beta tested etc. (I think he was honestly quite shocked by the attitude he encountered)

Bob's a clever guy but he has a nasty stubborn streak. His customers certainly don't feel like they are treated as customers who pay for products. If he was a waiter at a resturant he'd be fired, if he's no good at PR or customer service then he should let his staff handle the issues professionally.

He's my vendor, not my @$%$@# father !! (R.I.P)

Was, past tense, I own PowerB 6,7,8 PBForms 1, 1.5 but I won't be upgrading again.

The Com implementation in v7 was a joke anyway and not improved syntactically in v8 and if it weren't for Jose Roca's efforts hardely worth the time to stuff around with. (Jose is a genius though, and very generous)

PowerB's customers were always better than PowerB, except Borge and Lance... and Borge vanished, ill it seems. Hope he's all right.

[Tipperton]

Hey Paul!

Welcome to PureBasic!

A while back I posted a message on the PowerBASIC forums to the effect that although PowerBASIC was a very good product and well worth the price, because it had very little native support for windows and controls (like PureBasic's Gadgets) and relied heavily on Windows API programming to fill the gap, that it wasn't the right choice for me at the time.

I didn't think that post was negative in any way but Bob still got very upset with me. I don't know if I'm banned or not, but I do know my membership to the forums was deleted since it can no longer find me. I decided not to even try re-creating my profile.

And you are right, the Cafe is full of intollerant and opinionated people who don't think anything of throwing out personal attacks because someone believes or feels differently than they do. For that reason I avoided all topics in the Cafe that were in way political or religious in nature because I knew they would just end up in a flame war.

As for the two separate compilers for Windows and Console apps, I believe there are two primary reasons for it. The first of course is it makes for two products to sell instead of one. And second, I believe that PowerBASIC is still just a DOS language with a few Windows goodies thown in so they can call it a Windows compiler. Heck even the compilers themselves are 16 bit DOS programs!

The one thing I like about PureBasic that PowerBASIC lacks is it's extensability. Except for DLLs, PowerBASIC is a closed language with no ability for users to extend it via plug-ins or user libraries, this is mainly because PowerBASIC doesn't use a linker as PureBASIC does, it generates ready to run code directly.

With PureBasic you can extend the language by adding any of the user libraries written my other PureBasic users or you can write your own user libraries and these get linked into your program rather than exist as a separate DLL.

PureBasic may not be as "polished" or "mature" as PowerBasic but it more than makes up for that with ease of use and features. And updates to fix problems are a lot more frequent than with PowerBASIC.

My 3.1415926 cents....

[thefool]

Still, I think I hold the title of the most hated PureB user

Correct..




nah. Those chinese things outruled you long time ago. You have to do something REALLY bad to get in the top position again hehe

Fred is the ONLY one who has a track record of keeping his promises to his users.

When I think of it, this is actually one of the best things about this place. Purebasic might need a little here and there, but if you request it its going to get in sooner or later (if its a good request, of course.)

Speaking from experience, folks don't rule with an iron fist here.

True, we have all people to do it for us.

To the elias quotes.

I think Bob has been extra nice
to me. I even started with a non-genuine copy of PowerBasic and they
didnt kicked my butt.

I know more than one case where a pureb user has confessed using an illegal copy, and Fred/pb team did NOT throw him out. Of course they arranged some sort of deal, i guess.

gave me as a gift the 8.00 version of PB.

Thats rude! here i still run around using 4.02!



Now let me grap this hot espresso and get fresh again!

[pdwyer]

I think if you match features PureB wins. I don't say that lightly though, I'm a 7 year user of PowerB and like the product, it weened me off VB in 2000 and I used it ever since.

I'm not so sure I'd say it wasn't extensible, it has win32 DLL support and thanks mainly to Jose Roca you could even use VB ActiveX controls on forms and DLLs! While PureB has it's static linking modules which I think are great (and PowerB people wishlisting for over there) VB ActiveX controls give you a lot of 3rd party componants to use. Paul Squire's Firefly IDE and RAD utilisde Jose's (I think) code to RAD activeX controls straight onto forms so considering the state of COM in PureB I'd probably revise the stance on extensiblity (But I know what you mean)

Micheal Mattias over there would probably say at this point "it's not the paintbrush it's the artist" but I'd tend to say that PureB gives me a better palate of colours to work with - if I was to steal his analogy

One point that I didn't like that PureB seems very free of is the wierd statement syntax. When PureB implements a feature via a module then it's function call so can be used inline, PowerB tends to like the syntax they use in DDT

Code: Select all

Dim MyTempStringVar as string
Control Get Text Hwnd, CtrlID to MyTempStringVar 
Call DoSomethingWithString(MyTempStringVar )
' Do hundreds of times as unnecessary! 

All the stuffing around with Varients in COM in PowerB is the same syntax so you need to create extra Vars and drop the data to them once rather than use them inline. PureB would take the (IMHO) obvious approach and say something like

Code: Select all

DoSomethingWithString(GetTextFromControl(HWnd, CtrlID))
; No temp vars!!

So for PowerB you'd end up writing wrapper functions for all the damn statements just to use them inline, or be stuffing around with temp vars and extra useless lines of code... and why? Just because PowerB wants to pseudo standardise on this statement syntax!

Well, I've certainly had my chance to vent! ! Now it's probably about time I went to get another scotch...er... I mean write some code!

PowerB and friends I made on their forum saved me from VB though, and for that I'll always be grateful!

[Tipperton]

Micheal Mattias over there would probably say at this point "it's not the paintbrush it's the artist" but I'd tend to say that PureB gives me a better palate of colours to work with - if I was to steal his analogy

It's actually both, a poor artist will produce poor work no matter what he uses, a good artist with poor tools can still produce good work, but a good artist with good tools can produce great work.

I also believe that the artist has to choose the tools that work best for him and between PowerBASIC and PureBasic, PureBasic works best for me.

[ConsoleMan]

I actually got banned from the PowerB forum for giving them a hard time about their vapourware policy (where they don't supply their customers with any roadmap info about their products).

I remember reading your posts

I never got banned, as I'm not much for posting. Big lurker most of the time. But Bob turned me away from PowerBasic himself. Shame too as I use to talk up his console compiler for small little utils (which is, with a few rare exceptions pretty much all I create) to all my fellow sys admins. You guys can not even imagine the hell I caught for politely saying no to his "upgrade" offer via email. I found him very insulting. I ended up asking him to remove me from his mail list and to not email me again. That email got a cheesy 'rejected as spam' type reply directly from his MUA. It was such a joke. I then called the office number and got to experience his customer service verbally. Needless to say I went from a big fan to a very angry ex-customer very quickly.

One thing I don't like about PowerB is that the commandline compiler and the windows compiler are two products to be purchased separately, I don't see any reason for this other than a historical legacy from when they were a dos compiler then kept for greed purposes.

Although I only create console apps, I did run into the fact that you have to have pbwin to create a DLL. My only use of PBwin was to create a DLL for a 4NT plugin I was working on.

From the perspective of someone coming from PowerB to PureB V4 is a big deal as the 64k string limitation is gone, this might not be a big thing for a PureB person but for a PowerB person this was close to a showstopper in changing compilers, I've owned PureB for a few years but only used it a little for cmdline apps partly because of this. Now this limitation is gone I'm a happy chappy and here to stay (I can also post in this forum unlike PowerB)

If I have a concern about PureB then it's threading, parts of it don't look thread safe ...

Thanks for that. I have been trying to find time to really try out PureBasic. I was worried about some of these limitations I had seen mentioned by you, Theo Gottwald, and others on the Pob forum in 2004.

[Tipperton]

You guys can not even imagine the hell I caught for politely saying no to his "upgrade" offer via email. I found him very insulting.

I can, I caught a bit of hell from him myself when I commented that because PowerBASIC relied so heavily on the Windows API instead of providing built-in functions like PureBasic's Window, Gadget and Event functions, that for me, PowerBASIC was not the right choice.

I don't know if he banned me or simply deleted me from the forum, I can't log in and when I try the password recovery, it says it can't find my e-mail address. Whether that's being banned or just deleted, I don't know, and I don't care since I have no plans or interest in going back there.

It's all a pitty though, PowerBASIC is a very good compiler and I believe that Bob doesn't even realize the damage he does with his attitudes. But ultimately, I believe that PowerBASIC is stuck in the past rather than looking forward. The whole thing just feels like a DOS BASIC re-wroked to support Windows instead of a true Windows oriented language.

Oh well..... His loss, our gain, because there is PureBasic! Thanks Fred and team!

[pdwyer]

Oh well..... His loss, our gain, because there is PureBasic! Thanks Fred and team!

Thankfully! This is turning into a support group for PowerB Has-beens

Getting ads from him after he banned me seems a bit rich though

When PowerB 7 introduced COM some liked the direction and some worried that it was headed of in a wrong (higher level) direction. When PowerB 8 came out the new GFX in DDT was a good step that people liked I thought but there was no progress with COM!!! The people who liked the COM direction got annoyed and the people finally picking it up suddenly wondered if it had a future in PB since the syntax was still ugly for variant usage but not improved in v8.

At least I won't be receiving mails here from bob asking me to mind my manners in the forum when he got up and called me a liar in front of everyone in the Cafe when I exposed the vaporware sham in regards to linux then when I tried to defent myself he deleted my post, locked the thread and killed my account so he had the last word!

Another member thought I'd been hard done by and started a new thread called "Do you think it's fair Paul was called a Liar" or something similar but it got canned too.

All traces of the posts look like that have been erased now though :roll:

China press is freer than PowerB Forums.

[Tipperton]

Getting ads from him after he banned me seems a bit rich though

I'll say, you could always write and say "Since I'm banned from the forums, please ban me from any more mailings from you!"

when I tried to defent myself he deleted my post, locked the thread and killed my account so he had the last word!

Sounds like what happened to me, my posts got deleted (in fact the whole thread that wa started by someone else got deleted), and my account "disappeared".... So maybe I am banned....

Another member thought I'd been hard done by and started a new thread called "Do you think it's fair Paul was called a Liar" or something similar but it got canned too.

Yup, they do practice censorship on their forums, anything even partially negative towards PowerB gets zapped.

[newtheogott]

I can say that I am Purebasic-customer of the first month, when it was available.

Thats was the time (15.08.2001) when I asked Fred:
---------------------------------
> Is it possible to compile DLL's like with Powerbasic DLL for usage
> with as Example VB ?

No, it's possible to do that for now.. But It's planned.

Regards,

--
Fred.
---------------------------------

I really like Purebasic especially because there was no need to buy updates once you are a customer. I liked the lots of keywords also.

I tried it several times (each year 1 or 2 times with small projects.
In fact the things I did were not for Purebasic, I run into stability issues everytime. Finally the missing QUAD Datatype permitted me to use it for a project where I wanted to support 64 bit File-Size (using Seek).

My impression is that I should make anotehr try on Purebasic and see if it has grown up since then. For my projects it is important that they are bug-free. This is where the strong side of Powerbasic is. Even difficult constructions compile to exactly what I expect.

As said I am a long time Purebasic customer and maybe I'll give it one more try when I get a project where it fits in. Anyway for me, I think I'll upgrade to the next Powerbasic, because of the reliability the product got over the years. And because it is really complete on DATATYPES.

We have shortly had the chance to look on the Datatypes Powerbasic/Purebasic. Its not only QUAD missing, there are other Datatypes which need to be implemented. Whats needed is:

- 8 bit
- 16 bit
- 32 bit
- 64 bit

INTEGER.
If possible, each in a signed and a unsigned version. Powerbasic comes near to that. Whats missing in Powerbasic is just the unsinged 64 bit everything else is there.
Anyway, in that region thats not yet a issue. Will be a point in VISTA 64, but as said Powerbasic 8 does not even run in that environment .

Back to Datatypes, Floating-Point:
DOUBLE
EXTENDED,
CURRENCY

and then the biggest difference:

STRING:
Powerbasic has real OLE-Strings. No zero-termination.
These strings can be used to store Binary files.
I can read in a binary file with INPUT# into a string.
No need for MEMALLOC etc.
And I can use all the String functions (MID$ etc. ...) including INSTR and REPLACE directly on Binary data.

This another programming style, in BASIC as it is in C. To my actual Knowledge, Purebasic is still more like C in string things and has only zero terminated strings. Powerbasic has also zero terminated strings, but its a question of programming style if you like them or not.

I have not been talking now, what I like about Purebasic (the NASM below Purebasic is very complete in Mnemonics, the MACROS) etc. but I think you all here know the good sides.

Thats why I wanted to show where someone coming from Powerbasic will have problems. Missing Datatypes are not that easy to replace as missing wrappers for IDE or graphics.

If these issues would be solved, especially the dynamic strings, it would be easier for me to think of using Purebasic more often. Actually Powerbasic is still my best tool.

[Trond]

dynamic strings

PureBasic's strings are dynamic. (But also zero-terminated.)

Does PowerBasic have a demo version?